


january rain

by silentsaint



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Hope, M/M, Pre-Canon, Time Travel, arguably plotless, canon compliant OR canon divergent its up to u, comedy? angst?? comedy???, pre-cc!sephiroth meets post-ac!cloud, sephiroth's weirdass evening, they get fries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26190802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsaint/pseuds/silentsaint
Summary: Somewhere in the bitter and the sweet dream.[Sephiroth meets an odd young man on the streets of Midgar one evening. The night only gets weirder from there.]
Relationships: Sephiroth & Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 14
Kudos: 296





	january rain

**Author's Note:**

> this was an idea that seized hold of me one night and refused to let go, and I ended up writing enough of it that it seemed worth polishing up into a little something. no idea what happened here, but it sure happened!!
> 
> when tagging this piece I just remembered the xemnas and sephiroth mcdonalds tumblr post. huh. maybe something in my subconscious manifested this out of that.
> 
> this fic is titled after a song of the same name. do yourselves a favor, and listen to it [here!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMY53PD8FTg)

“You gonna eat those?”

“Eh...no.”

The young man makes a noncommittal grunt in response, before reaching forward to shovel a handful of Sephiroth’s fries into his mouth. Sephiroth lets him, mainly out of an odd sense of social inertia and combined with a macabre fascination with the man’s lack of table manners.

It has been...an odd evening so far. 

It started out normally enough, with Sephiroth retiring to his room in the Shinra building at a respectable quarter past seven, intending to have a light dinner, finish up some paperwork, and potentially have a mug of tea before bedtime at nine. A quiet night, one that would hopefully leave him at the very least mildly refreshed for an early start tomorrow.

As with many other things in Sephiroth’s life, Genesis had not only disrupted those plans, but driven a metaphorical stake into their heart and spat on the resulting corpse. He had just begun ‘preparing dinner’ (which usually meant phoning his secretary and asking him to send something up), when lo and behold his office became the scene of an invasion. A very small and mostly nonviolent invasion, consisting of his two fellow Firsts barging in and requesting him to join them for a night on the town. 

Well. It was less of a ‘request’ and more of Genesis launching into a soliloquy on the ‘merits of making the most of one’s youth’ and the ‘perils of frittering away and going grey before ever realizing how to enjoy life to its fullest’, while Angeal looked on in equal parts exasperation and fondness. 

It became clear early on that the only way to get his friend to stop would be to agree to whatever he had in mind, and Sephiroth had then and there resigned himself to an evening much less quiet than he had been envisioning. 

_The inherent desirability of uneventfulness. Oh how we lust after the mundane._

Genesis, equal parts elated and miffed at being able to convince him so quickly, had dragged the two of them down to the first floor, and promptly set out in the direction of Sector 8, the entertainment district. The idea was to get dinner at one of the ritzy restaurants Genesis frequented, and then see a showing of whatever theatrical extravaganza had most recently caught the man’s eye.

That was the idea, anyway. A snag was caught when getting a dinner reservation proved to be more difficult than anticipated, and the night had only derailed further from there. 

Sephiroth stands, alone, on the sidewalk, a little unsure of both where and when it is. 

At least it’s not cold out, as it is still well in the midst of summer. The streets are not bustling, but they’re far from empty either. All the same, people always part before him like the sea breaking in twain, and Sephiroth finds that walking back to Shinra Tower the long way is more of a lengthy process than a tedious one.

He turns the corner, down a brightly lit street that leads towards the station. The people going to and fro are well dressed, as is normal in this part of Sector 8. There must be a theater around here somewhere, if the amount of posters advertising such are to be believed. 

Sephiroth allows himself a small smile at the sight. It’s no wonder that Genesis frequents this place. His loquacious friend most likely feels right at home in this environment, bubbling with excitement and frivolity as it is. It’s a miracle that they can drag him away from it at all, what with-

Without warning, something shifts in the air.

On instinct, or perhaps the unavoidable pull of an unearthly string, the hair on the back of Sephiroth’s neck stands up. Something prickles under his skin, some innate warning system whispering of _danger,_ and _you are not alone._

It’s the work of a moment to scan the crowd, picking out potential threats and suspicious figures. Not the woman flirting with the theater doorman...not the man loudly regaling his friend with some drunken exploit a little too bombastically for a sidewalk...definitely not the elderly couple speaking softly to each other as they make their way down the road…

Sephiroth’s brows knit together.

Ah. There.

There’s a young man loitering in an alley just to his right...though that’s hardly something to remark upon in and of itself. It’s a little hard to say what exactly it is that catches his eye and glues it to the man, what grabs his attention forcibly and tugs it to a figure standing slouched against a wall and clothed in shadow.

The reason as to ‘why’ remains elusive. But his gaze is firmly pinned to the figure all the same, and for a long moment, Sephiroth simply looks.

He’s a good two heads shorter than Sephiroth, but then again just about everyone is shorter than Sephiroth, so it isn’t really much of an accomplishment. His hair, pale blond, would seem to be trying to make up for it; spiking like it has something to prove by growing straight up instead of obeying gravity like everyone else’s. He’s dressed in non-descript black leathers, a sleeveless shirt combined with a single leather pauldron, held in place by a silver buckle shaped like a wolf’s head.

His eyes...it’s impossible not to notice, even for someone without Sephiroth’s crystal clear vision. Despite the fact he’s still standing a good twenty feet away, they glow like a beacon in the darkness of the alleyway. Deep blue, and the unmistakable violent emerald ring around the pupil.

_Mako eyes. A SOLDIER trademark._

Sephiroth clears his throat, and steps forward.

“Off duty, then?” It can’t hurt to make polite conversation. Director Lazard has had many things to say about softening up Sephiroth’s image to his direct subordinates...even if he’s never said anything of the sort directly in front of the president. 

This young man must be a newer Third Class, if only by the fact that Sephiroth doesn’t immediately recognize his face. On leave perhaps, or some other such reason. 

“Sort of.” 

The SOLDIER’s voice isn’t all that deep but it’s low, and reserved. Fenced up and guarded like the estate of a wealthy and paranoid man. He doesn’t move from where he’s leaning against the wall, apparently not seeing the need for formality to a superior when they’re both arguably off duty.

Something twitches in the back of Sephiroth’s mind. Maybe it’s an irk of annoyance. “Your name? I haven’t seen you around before.” It seems more than a little superfluous to introduce himself, especially considering there’s a lightly-weathered poster containing his likeness right next to where the man is standing. 

“...Cloud.” 

It’s unclear as to whether that’s a last name or a first name, but before Sephiroth can inquire, the man peels himself off the wall, finally standing up straight. It doesn’t give him much extra in the way of height but…

Warning bells flare to life once again in Sephiroth’s mind, blaring their awareness to the high heavens of his brain. There’s something about the petite nature of the man that belies the sinuous quality to his movements, a walking juxtaposition of a large predator trapped in a small and unassuming body. His musculature is defined, and Sephiroth’s eyes track the familiar set of his shoulders and the measured quality to his gait as he steps forward. 

A warrior. Probably far beyond the merit of a Third Class, though why the thought occurs to him with such conviction is a little odd. 

_Who...are you?_

The man, Cloud apparently, strolls towards him with all the grace of a wolf on the prowl. He stops a few feet away, glittering eyes looking Sephiroth up and down in assessment, though what he’s assessing for is unclear. It feels uncomfortably like being under the scrutiny of whoever is doing his routine physicals, as though a list of boxes is being ticked off and he is ultimately going to be found wanting.

“You eaten yet?”

Sephiroth stares at him. He blinks, and then he stares some more. 

“...no?”

The young man’s eyebrows raise as if in acknowledgement, before he turns, starting off down the street at a stroll. That same casual grace continues to pervade his movements, holding Sephiroth’s eyes with an unyielding grip. 

He seems confident that Sephiroth will _follow_ him, and out of a combined bemusement and curiosity, Sephiroth does.

It would be a misrepresentation of the facts to say that Sephiroth expected to find himself seated in the brightly colored booth of a fast food restaurant, somewhere in the seedier part of Sector 8, at what the clock on the wall would describe to be just past ten in the evening. Even less so would be the expectation to have a stranger seated across from him, leaning nonchalantly back in his seat and avoiding eye contact.

“Do you...eat here often?” It’s not the best attempt at small talk, but it is an attempt, and there is something brewing in the current silence between them that Sephiroth isn’t quite sure how to describe.

It is...somewhat tense, to say the least.

“No.” There’s a brief flicker of eye contact as Cloud shifts his gaze from the left to the right. “Never been here before, actually.”

“New to Midgar then?” Sephiroth feels the keen desire for something to do with his hands other than resting them in his lap.

“No.” The young man still does not look at him, instead studying the wall across the room as though it holds the secrets of all human thought.

Sephiroth feels a muscle in his jaw twitch. “I see.”

“...” Cloud continues staring at the wall vaguely over Sephiroth’s shoulder like he’s going to lose in a staring contest if he looks away.

“...” For lack of anything else to do, Sephiroth studies the surface of the table, the silver sheen on the wolf clasp of Cloud’s pauldron, the uninspiring black leather of his own gloved hands.

_I really don’t know how socialites do it._

They are saved from the perils of more unenthusiastic questions and monosyllabic responses by the arrival of food, and while Sephiroth would not normally count himself ‘delighted’ to be handed a plate of potatoes dropping in grease and a burger made with meat of dubious origin, life is always full of surprises.

He is rather peckish after all. Curse the SOLDIER metabolism.

Cloud digs in without a second thought, now devoting the entirety of his attention to the food rather than the man at the table with him. It begs the question of why he invited Sephiroth here in the first place. The query turns itself over and over in Sephiroth’s mind as they eat. Hero worship is a common possibility, but Cloud, whoever he may be, just doesn’t seem like the type.

There is also the possibility that something more nefarious is at play here, which is a possibility he has been considering from the start. An Avalanche scheme, or something of the sort. Another Anti-Shinra group could’ve had a fledgeling claw dug into the world, or even collaborators with Wutai. It’s his duty to inform someone of such things immediately.

...but without anything more than mere suspicions, he’s well within his rights to treat this as any other dinner invitation. And so Sephiroth, war-weary and with just enough initiative left to play the investigator for once, stays right in his seat.

Once the food is about half gone, the silence feels too full and unwieldy to continue on any longer. Sephiroth pauses halfway into a bite, and lays the card that has been building up on his mind since their initial encounter flat on the table.

“You’re not a SOLDIER, are you.”

The young man blinks at him, but does not stop eating. “...nope. Never have been.” He speaks from around a mouthful of french fries, so the sound is a little displaced. At the very least, he keeps his mouth shut.

There isn’t a single tell of a lie on him. No pupil dilation, no hesitation, nothing. He’s either a born actor, or telling the truth.

With a patience that has been built up from working in a company environment that could rival one of the seven hells, Sephiroth waits for the young man to pause before he asks his next question. The evening has quite suddenly become...even more odd.

“How did you get the glow in your eyes if you’re not in SOLDIER?”

Something flickers across the young man’s expression, but it goes by too fast for Sephiroth to make heads or tails of it. “Accident. Happened when I was a teenager.” 

“An accident?” This verges on prying into things that are presumably none of his business, but the curiosity coiling around in his throat refuses to be tempered. “There is normally a very low survival and recovery rate of Mako-related accidents, if you don’t mind my saying so.” 

If there is a true story to be found here, it would appear to be an exceptionally odd one.

“Yeah.” The man pauses for a moment to eat another fistful of fries, not meeting Sephiroth’s gaze. “There normally is.”

No one could rightly accuse Sephiroth of being adept socially, but even he can hear the warning bells pealing out the rhythm of _back off, back off, back off before he tries to stab you with the plastic knife._ “I see. Then you are very fortunate.”

The expression that crosses the young man’s face at _that_ is an even odder one, some mixture of amusement and a twist of something much more bitter. “I’m alive.”

“And to be alive is fortunate indeed.” It’s a bit of an empty sentiment on his part, but it does make Cloud’s face shift in a certain way, that at the very least _isn’t_ a scowl, for once.

“I...guess you’re right.” Cloud’s still not looking at him, but Sephiroth counts it as a success when the corners of the young man’s mouth twitch in a vaguely upwards direction.

The probability of it being an act seems to tank with each odd and stilted reaction of the young man’s. He’s awkward and blunt to a fault, in a way that seems unlikely for someone to try to fake.

What a curious individual. 

The conversation becomes a little easier from there, or at the very least the silence no longer holds a weird tinge to it’s edges. They finish their meal in what Sephiroth would almost describe as ‘peace’.

How odd. It seems he did receive a quiet evening after all, albeit an unconventional one.

There are a few other scattered facts that Sephiroth learns as the conversation continues. Cloud is twenty three, two years older than Sephiroth. He likes motorcycles, or at the very least works with them often enough to be familiar with them. He does not speak of any friends or family, but neither does Sephiroth, so it’s an even playing field. There is a spattering of pale freckles across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, speaking to someone who grew up in a colder climate. He speaks a little less hesitantly when he’s not looking directly at Sephiroth’s face, though that is a fairly common reaction in the Silver General’s presence. 

However, the most intriguing fact is that he’s not in the least bit intimidated by Sephiroth, no matter what he seems to say or do. Guarded, yes. Quiet, yes, though Sephiroth would hedge his bets on that being Cloud’s default state. But intimidated? 

There isn’t a trace of fear in those horribly bright eyes. And on the rare occasion that Cloud does look him full in the face, they bore into him in a way that makes Sephiroth wonder whose face it is that Cloud looks at him and sees. 

The young man before him is both close enough to touch, and light years away. A paradox shrouded in mystery, or maybe he’s been spending too much time absently skimming through the novels Genesis accidentally leaves on his desk.

...and it would appear Cloud has noticed the way he’s studying him.

“You get out much?” There is that same unabashedness, a genuine novelty among the scripts his other interactions generally follow. No one else would dare to be so blunt directly to his face. 

No one...except a petite stranger he met in an alley, with eyes gleaming like ocean jade.

It startles a huff of laughter past Sephiroth’s lips, barely more than an exhalation. “Not in the general sense, no. I’m afraid work keeps me busy most of the time.”

“Then do I have something on my face?” Something lingers in the young man’s tone, some extra trace of disbelief or...or…

Or yet another mystery, for Sephiroth to file under Cloud’s name.

“No, not at all.” Socially incompetent as he might be, ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before, and the odd way you look at me spikes my curiosity with a hunger’ is probably the wrong thing to announce.

Well. Genesis could probably say something like that, and not only get away with it but somehow endear the listener at the same time, but he’s no Genesis.

“...Right.” Cloud shifts in his seat, and the odd tang of premature regret assaults Sephiroth’s nervous system, something whispering the words _don’t walk away, whatever you do_. “Do you know where the nearest fire escape is?”

Sephiroth blinks. And then he blinks again.

“Are you...planning to start a fire?” 

It had been intended as a dry sort of half-joke, but the way something stiffens in Cloud’s posture makes it not only fall instantly flat, but makes the hair on the back of Sephiroth’s neck prick upwards once again. It’s like the world around the two of them falls into slow motion, and the seconds in which the color visibly drains from Cloud’s face stretch on and on into an eternity.

Eternity is over rather quickly, as Cloud stands quickly and ungracefully from the bench, and looks down at him expressionlessly. “I have a personal vendetta against arsonists.”

His eyebrows must be soaring into his hairline right now. “Duly noted.” Sephiroth pushes himself to his feet and looks down at him from his full height. “Then why is it that you need the fire escape?”

Cloud shrugs, a jerky and unbalanced motion. “Roof.” He stares right back up at Sephiroth, unblinking and unafraid.

“And why is it, Cloud, that you are headed to the roof?” His voice is quiet to match Cloud’s, even if the establishment they’re currently standing in is all but empty, save for them and the bored cashier.

Now _that_ provokes a reaction. A near imperceptible shudder runs through Cloud’s posture, something that Sephiroth feels sure he would’ve missed if he had blinked. It happens just as Cloud’s name leaves his lips, as though saying his name aloud for the first time were akin to pressing the button of an electrical current.

It leaves them both staring at each other, silently.

Cloud is the first to break their impromptu staring matching, whirling around on his heel and heading for the door. “Sky.”

“...there are no stars visible from the city itself, I’m afraid.” It only takes two strides to catch up with the shorter man, the same unearthly string coiling around his waist and propelling him forward. 

He only receives a mere grunt in acknowledgement at that, and Cloud’s path weaves out the door and around the side of the building, as if some sixth sense is leading him towards the aforementioned fire escape.

And Sephiroth easily follows in his wake, somehow utterly fascinated.

It was true what he said, that you cannot see the stars from any part of Midgar. In Sephiroth’s eyes, it is odder to look up into the grey expanse of space and see gems sparkling above, than it is to simply be met with the clouded void. That is the experience of many who have been born and bred in the mako-city, unused to seeing the sky as anything but empty.

He still remembers the first time he ever saw the stars, glimmering far above the mountains near Wutai. An unearthly sight, and one that had left it’s own unique imprint on his teenage mind.

And as for the present…

Cloud’s gaze has turned upwards when they’re seated on the roof together, as if he’s searching the clouded and smoggy Midgar skies for anything to signify that the heavens still exist. He doesn’t seem phased to find nothing but greenish smoke, and if anything, that only cements the validity of his claims that Midgar is unforeign to him.

The mako stench of Midgar’s air is especially obvious here on a rooftop. Sephiroth wrinkles his nose, and as if from far away, a small voice in the back of his mind delights in the oddity of the night.

It seems natural, to sit here with the stranger like this. Natural in a way that defies description, as if something deep within his ribcage compels him to continue sitting here instead of doing the responsible thing and taking his leave. They don’t know each other. They most likely have no reason to.

And yet Cloud doesn’t tell him to go. And yet he doesn’t leave.

The world condenses into a bubble around the two of them, as if the only three things that have ever mattered in the universe are the two of them and the oddly comfortable silence that has formed between them. There is no starlight but it does not matter, not in the grand scheme of things.

“Thanks.”

Cloud’s quiet voice breaks the silence without warning, and Sephiroth startles slightly at the sound of it. “Whatever for?”

The young man’s gaze has not moved from the sky above, but something in his expression has relaxed. “For coming to dinner with me.”

Something else is being said, an entirely different intention behind the innocuous words. Socially oblivious as he is, he can still hear it. But for the life of him, Sephiroth can’t discern what exactly it is.

Slowly, Cloud stands to his feet before Sephiroth can think what to say in response to that. “She was right. I can see it now.” For the first time that evening, something resembling a real smile spreads itself over Cloud’s face. “How funny, that it happened this way.”

“I’m sorry, w-” Before he can finish the question, Sephiroth finds his face caught up between two leather gloved hands, and Cloud’s eyes are very wide and very bright above him. 

~~_I know you, I know you, I know you, I know you, I know you better than I know myself-_ ~~

_Who are you? Who are you really?_

The angles and planes of Cloud’s face are unknown to him, a complete stranger in physical form. And yet it feels as though he is looking up into a mirror, and from some bizarre subconscious twitch in Sephiroth’s mind, there is the nonsensical whisper that they are one and the same.

_Cloud._

“You won’t remember this tomorrow. Or maybe you will, she didn’t specify.” Cloud doesn’t move his hands, continuing to hold him in place. Sephiroth doesn’t think he could pull away if he wanted to. The simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar gleam of mako bright eyes is utterly all consuming.

 _I think...I now understand where the city is hiding it’s stars._ Such mindless and desperate thoughts mean less than nothing, and yet something still burns wildly in the center of Sephiroth’s ribcage.

“Sephiroth.” 

There is so much _recognition_ in the way that Cloud’s lips form the syllables of his name that his next breath is stolen away from him. It’s the same far-away terror that comes with staring down the barrel of a gun, the horrifying and titillating supposition that whoever Cloud is, whatever Cloud is, he somehow knows him quite well already.

Cloud smiles, something soft and oddly sad. “Be well.”

A sound, like a gentle whisper, like a brief rustle of feathers or cloth. Coolness, like evening’s chill breeze after the warm embrace of summer has retreated for the day.

_Cloud Strife._

Sephiroth is alone, staring up into the empty sky.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/SEFIKURAS) || [tumblr](https://sephirothcrescent.tumblr.com/)


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